why you should try MythTv

[pardsbane at offthehill.org (Josh Pollak)]

On Oct 5, 2004, at 11:17 PM, David Backeberg wrote:

> I have no idea how to mod a TiVo, as I went straight to using MythTv. 
> Among things I haven't had to mod to get:

Funny, I tried the MythTV route and finally gave up, I couldn't get it 
working as nicely as I wanted

> -qwerty keyboard

Funny, I couldn't STOP using the keyboard, and frankly, I don't want to 
use a keyboard to control my tv.

<sniped lots of cool features>

Yes, all very cool.

> There was a BLU meeting / presentation about mythtv a few months ago.

Yeah, I missed that one. :(

> Incidentally, I used the Hauppauge PVR 250 card, but knowing what I 
> now know, I recommend a cheaper card with more mature drivers built 
> directly into the kernel, like the Hauppauge PCI WinTV card using the 
> bttv drivers.

I would disagree on this. The reasons are two fold: The PVR250 does 
hardware compression, the basic WinTV which I used does software 
compression. The WinTV device did a HORRIBLE job of cable tuning, even 
straight from a clean cable source. Software compression is all well 
and good, but it is tricky to get real time compression and 
decompression at reasonable speeds. I was trying to do it on a 2800+ 
Athlon wtih 256 mb of ram. It wasn't enough.

Another issue: My video card didn't do Overscan, so the VGA-to-TV 
conversion looked quite poor.

In case your curious about what hardware NOT to use, I had a Shuttle 
MiniTX case with an Athlon 2800+ and a WinTV card. If I had to do it 
over again, I'd search for a video card with known overscan abilities, 
a larger case to get the WinTV card away from electrical noise which 
probably messed with the reception, and would use a card that does 
hardware compression.

Oh, and the hours spent trying to get LIRC to work with my remote got 
old really fast. I'd rather start with the Tivo hardware and hack from 
there. Not that MythTV isn't a cool way to go, but someone needs to put 
together a list of specific hardware and a distro to match that gets 
you a solid result without too much work.

-Josh